![\"Derek](\"http:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-content\/uploads\/070417-ritzcarlton-flint.gif\" "\\"Derek")
Beijing's Financial District, the area located west of the Forbidden City, has seen many new hotel openings in the last year. With businesses also flocking to this area, it is ripe for the hospitality sector, and The Ritz-Carlton Beijing, Financial Street took advantage of this area with its recent opening.<\/p>\n
Derek Flint is general manager of the hotel. He has been working with The Ritz-Carlton for 10 years and with this hotel since the beginning of February 2007. His job is to help position the hotel as the choice for discerning luxury business and leisure travelers visiting Beijing.<\/p>\n
How do you feel you the financial district in Beijing will develop over the next 5 years?<\/strong> What sort of qualities do you look for when hiring staff?<\/strong> What are some challenges to operating in Beijing? <\/strong> How does Ritz-Carlton train and retain its staff?<\/strong> What was the best advice you received when starting out in this industry, and what advice could you give to others just beginning their journeys in the hospitality sector?<\/strong> How does Ritz-Carlton plan to expand in the coming five years throughout China?<\/strong> What sort of corporate social responsibility initiatives does Ritz-Carlton plan for anti-corruption, environmental sustainability and consumer protection areas?<\/strong> Beijing's Financial District, the area located west of the Forbidden City, has seen many new hotel openings in the last year. With businesses also flocking to this area, it is ripe for the hospitality sector, and The Ritz-Carlton Beijing, Financial Street took advantage of this area with its recent opening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12723],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe development will be explosive. It is already being referred to as the Chinese equivalent to Wall Street. It is currently home to a number of key government agencies, 70 percent of China\u2019s top 100 companies, and over 300 financial institutions. Financial Street also represents more than 50 percent of the country\u2019s total financial assets. There is tremendous potential here and with more businesses migrating into the area, Financial Street will become a focal destination point for Beijing.<\/p>\n
\nAt The Ritz-Carlton, our ladies and gentlemen (our employees) are the most important resource in our service commitment to our guests. Hence, we are very thorough and selective during the recruitment process. More importantly, we select people who are caring and empathetic rather than experienced. Experience can be taught, you can't teach people to care or be empathetic. They either are or not. At our hotel, 95 percent of our employees are Chinese, including the senior leadership team, all very dynamic and motivated.<\/p>\n
\nOur biggest challenge is building awareness about our hotel. Not many people are familiar with Ritz-Carlton or even know we are here. So our push is to create awareness in the market place! We begin by building relationships in the community; the immediate neighborhood who is home to most of our key partners.<\/p>\n
\nTraining is key and we do not put anyone on the job by themselves until they are fully trained.\u00a0 We spend on average of 300 hours a year on every employee so it's that important. We retain our employees by creating a work environment where people want to come to work. So we create a culture where our leaders are trying to catch people doing things right rather than catching them doing things wrong. And we celebrate all their achievements, big or small.<\/p>\n
\nThe best advice I was given was to always be better than you were the day before.\u00a0 This has become my mission statement and I tell it to everyone who will listen. Think about it – it talks about continuous improvement. Something we all should be striving for.<\/p>\n
\nChina for us will be huge. In the next two years we will be opening 6 new hotels – another in Beijing at China Central Place, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Sanya, Shanghai in Pudong, and Hong Kong in Kowloon.<\/p>\n
\nOur first mission statement, created in 1983, committed that \"The Ritz-Carlton Hotels will be known as positive, supportive members of their community and will be sensitive to the environment\".\u00a0 Over the past two decades, our community focus has impacted the lives of many \u2013 those benefiting from our efforts as well as those of us giving of our time.\u00a0 Our commitment to our communities is that we will make a lasting contribution and a meaningful difference \u2013 which we continuously strive to achieve through The Community Footprints program.This program is implemented in every Ritz-Carlton hotel and focuses on key areas where we can best use our resources and make the biggest impact on the community namely through volunteerism, fund raising, product donations, community career opportunities and environmental preservation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"